TH v AR: Family Court adjourns lump sum claim after asset-stripping findings

The Family Court has adjourned a husband's lump sum claim in a high value financial remedies case rather than dismissing it outright, after finding that the wife and her father had stripped value from the parties' most valuable asset during the course of the proceedings.

The judgement, handed down by Nicholas Allen KC, sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge, on 11 September 2026, concerned a couple, referred to throughout as H and W to preserve the anonymity direction attached to the case, whose marriage of 24 years produced visible assets of around £47.5 million, spread across England, Russia and Cyprus. Many of the Russian and Cypriot assets, including the parties' most valuable holding, a Cypriot company owning a Moscow shopping centre, were formally held in the name of W's father. H's case, which the judge accepted, was that these were sham arrangements entered into for tax and regulatory reasons, with beneficial ownership always remaining with the couple.

W disengaged from the proceedings after an early stage, communicating only sporadically by email and failing to comply with a series of court orders, including directions to disclose her father's contact details, file a defence to the beneficial ownership claim, and provide updating financial disclosure. She was ultimately debarred from advancing a positive case on contributions, conduct or beneficial ownership. The judge nonetheless emphasised that debarment did not relieve the court of its duty under section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 to reach a fair outcome on the evidence available, drawing on the non-disclosure principles in Moher v Moher to draw adverse inferences against W where appropriate.

Applying the presumption in section 37(5) of the 1973 Act, the judge set aside a transfer of the Cypriot company's shares to W's father, finding it had been made with the intention of defeating H's claim, and made declarations that several Russian properties nominally held by W's father were in fact held on trust for the couple. During the proceedings, however, the judge found that W's father had redomiciled the underlying Russian business away from the Cypriot holding company, in apparent breach of freezing orders in both England and Cyprus, leaving the shares H was awarded substantially denuded of value.

Rather than dismiss H's lump sum claim or attempt a notional valuation, the judge adjourned it generally, with liberty to restore within twelve months, describing this as a means of guarding against the practical failure of the award given W's conduct, while declining to divide the shares between the parties in specie under the Wells sharing jurisdiction, applying the Court of Appeal's recent clarification in Culligan v Rosemin-Culligan that such orders are neither a last resort nor standard practice. The judge also found that H's substantial pre-marital wealth justified a departure from equal sharing of the visible assets in his favour, applying the principles in Standish v Standish on matrimonialisation.

On costs, the judge summarily assessed indemnity costs of £525,000 against W and her father jointly and severally, citing their wholesale failure to comply with court orders, W's non-disclosure, and the redomiciliation of the shopping centre asset during live freezing order proceedings as conduct taking the case out of the norm. A final anti-suit injunction was also granted restraining any competing claim in Russia over the property H is to retain.